Yes, Missouri, There Really Is a Bootheel: Growing Up in the Bootheel - Paperback

by Clyde J. Faries (Author)

The Great War was over. Land left as swamps by the New Madrid Earthquake had been drained. Men, some of them veterans of World War I, searching for work came into this newly-opened territory in order to cut timber, clear new ground and create productive farms out of this once-sunken soil. Most, like D.O. Faries, who migrated from Illinois, leased acreage or sharecropped -- planting, chopping, and picking cotton for a percentage of the profit due absent landlords. In this frontier society, food was often scarce and floods were frequent, but there was also time, in the midst of tragedy, for laughter and love. Meet the characters populating the Bootheel between World Wars I and II. Join the Faries family and follow their lives as seen through the eyes of the youngest child in the household. Be there for his birth, the loss of his mother, his first date, and the separation of the family during World War II. This is Clyde's memory of life between the levees.

Author Biography

Clyde Faries received his PhD in Rhetoric and Public Address from the University of Missouri, and retired as a Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Western Illinois University. He served terms as President of the Georgia Speech Association, the Illinois Speech and Theatre Association, and the Missouri Folklore Society. Retirement allowed him to spend 1991 and 1994 in Changsha, Hunan, China, teaching at the National University of Defence Technology. His life outside the classroom included writing and directing "Mystery" plays for Elderhostels, British and American folk music, pickle ball, and golf. He now lives in the retirement community of Terre du Lac.